The puckish appeal of Charles Stone III’s The Underdoggs, a new spin on The Bad News Bears, is apparent from its opening title card, which offers a warning that its R rating was well earned, that no child should watch it, and that, well, the kids you really have to worry about are the ones whose parents don’t allow them to watch R-rated films.
Snoop Dogg stars as Jaycen “Two Js” Jennings, a former high school football star whose clutch, single-handed catch during his senior-year championship game set him up for a career as a young NFL hotshot who, predictably, flamed out in a blaze of ignominy, hubris, and sativa. (His puff-don’t-pass signature end-zone dance makes it clear that the “two Js” of his nickname aren’t derived from his first and last names.) Much like Bernie Mac’s character in Stone’s Mr. 3000, Jaycen seems to be the last one to know just how washed up he is, and thus incapable of recognizing the shot at redemption standing right in front of him.
Following a high-speed car crash that goes viral on TikTok, a judge (Kandi Burruss) sentences Jaycen to serve community service in his (and Snopp’s own) hometown Long Beach, where he catches a glimpse of a hapless pee-wee league football team whose members spend less time running drills than they do running their mouths. Seeing a group of impressionable kindred spirits, along with the opportunity to rekindle with his high school sweetheart, Cherise (Tika Sumpter)—who’s now mother to one of the most promising team members, Tre (Jonigan Booth)—Jaycen jumps into coaching with, if not both feet, then at least both eyes on the possibility that he can rewrite viral history with his band of disadvantaged, foul-mouthed misfits.
Throughout The Underdoggs, Stone’s gift for blending raucous humor with genuine human sentiment is, if not in full flower, still very much palpable. For every inappropriate nickname that Jaycen graces on his charges (which leads, in one case, to Snoop uttering the should-be-immortal retort to an 11-year-old’s question: “Another excellent question, Titties”), there’s a balancing injection of pint-sized pathos. When one kid repeatedly demurs from letting Jaycen know where he should be dropped off after practice, the nascent coach gently lets him know he used to do the same thing, and that there’s no reason to feel shame for where you live.
But there’s only so much Stone can do with the standard-issue script’s heap of “head held high” cornpone, so he thankfully leans on the equally authentic rude humor. This comes in especially handy when the Underdoggs end up facing off against the obsequiously entitled prep school champions and their coach Chip Collins (Andrew Schulz), whose dog whistles along the lines of “Why do they [the Underdoggs] look so angry?” are the film’s true obscenity.
Is any of this fresh even by the standards of Stone’s own filmography? Not really, but as the film’s closing title card points out, Snoop Dogg in real life has been mentoring youth football teams for nearly two decades now, molding hundreds and hundreds of underprivileged kids. If nothing else, The Underdoggs is a heartfelt chance to allow Snoop to take that bow.
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